Framer

Your gallery on Windows 11.

Framer is a quiet, local-first photo and video gallery for Windows 11, built with Tauri 2 + Rust and a dependency-light TypeScript UI. Pick your folders and Framer builds a gallery from the files that are already on your computer. Nothing is imported, copied or uploaded: your files stay yours.

Mode	What it does
Library	Every photo and video from your sources, on one timeline grouped by year, month, day
Folders	The real folder structure, with a sidebar tree, breadcrumbs and subfolder cards
Disk Usage	Read-only drive and folder analysis, with large-file and cleanup guidance
Albums	Planned for a later release (the sidebar entry is a placeholder)

Run it

Requirements: Windows 11, Rust (MSVC toolchain), Node.js 20+, and the WebView2 runtime (already part of Windows 11).

npm install
npm run desktop          # tauri dev: Vite + Rust with hot reload
npm run desktop:build    # release build + installer in src-tauri/target/release/bundle

Tests:

npm test                 # TypeScript logic (virtual-grid layout, zoom maths, formatting)
npm run test:rust        # indexer, search, EXIF, thumbnails, watcher, migrations
npm run check            # tsc --noEmit

What is in v0.1

Library — timeline by year/month/day with a sticky month label, a virtualised grid (only the rows on screen exist in the DOM, so 50 000 items cost the same as 50), adjustable thumbnail size, Fit vs Fill thumbnails, Recently Added, Favorites, Videos and Screenshots views, multi-select (Ctrl/Shift/keyboard), per-view scroll and selection memory, and Back/Forward between views.

Indexing — add one or more folders (subfolders included). Scanning runs on a background thread, commits in batches so photos appear immediately, skips files whose size and modified time did not change, reads the real capture date and orientation from EXIF, and can be paused or cancelled from the sidebar. Overlapping sources (D:\Photos and D:\Photos\2026) are refused so nothing appears twice. A file watcher picks up changes while Framer is open.

Viewer + Quick Look — Space for Quick Look, Enter to open. Wheel/pinch zoom around the cursor, drag to pan, Ctrl + / Ctrl − / Ctrl 0, double-click to zoom, full-screen (F11), previous/next with prefetching, favorite (F), information panel (I) with file facts and camera EXIF, Esc returns to the same selected tile. Originals load straight from disk (no re-encoding); the cached thumbnail shows instantly while they decode.

Search — Ctrl+F. File names, folders, formats, years, months and dates: sunset.jpg, Bali, PNG, 2026, October 2026, 2026-10-24, videos. Every word must match.

Disk Usage — analyze an entire drive such as C:\ or D:\, or choose a specific folder. Results can be opened folder-by-folder to reveal where space is used, with separate lists for the largest files and conservative cleanup suggestions. Scans run off the UI thread, report live progress, can be cancelled, stay entirely local, and never delete or modify files. On Windows, Framer counts each physical file ID once so NTFS hard links do not inflate totals, skips symlinks/junctions and C:\Windows, but includes Program Files and ProgramData. The primary number is allocated space on disk; logical file size remains visible for comparison. Suggestions distinguish regeneratable cache/temp data from personal files that need careful review.

Safe by design

• Remove from Framer (Sources) only forgets the index. Move to Recycle Bin (Delete) is a separate, explicit, confirmed action that uses the Windows Recycle Bin, so it is always recoverable.
• An unplugged drive never wipes the index: the source is marked unavailable, photos stay browsable with cached thumbnails and an offline badge, it reconnects by itself when the drive returns, and Locate Folder relinks a moved source while keeping favorites.
• Favorites live in their own table keyed by path, so rescans and re-adding a folder never lose them.

Settings — theme (Follow Windows / Light / Dark), default thumbnail size, folder watching, scan on launch, thumbnail cache size limit (oldest thumbnails evicted first) and one-click cache clearing.

How it is built

src/                  TypeScript UI (no framework)
  grid/               virtual grid engine: layout.ts (pure, unit-tested) + media-grid.ts
  viewer/             viewer, Quick Look, zoom/pan maths (zoom.ts, unit-tested)
  views/              library, folders, sources, settings, welcome
  shell.ts            sidebar (+ folder tree), toolbar, routing, global shortcuts
  styles/             design tokens + component CSS (Segoe UI Variable, 232px sidebar, 4px grid gap)
src-tauri/src/
  scan.rs             background indexer: batches, pause/cancel, safe pruning
  watch.rs            file watchers, debounce, drive plug/unplug detection
  media.rs            queries: views, timeline groups, positions, favorites, Recycle Bin
  search.rs           search box -> SQL (parameterised, never string-built)
  thumbs.rs           thumbnail cache, bounded decode pool, EXIF rotation, framer-thumb:// protocol
  disk.rs             read-only drive scanner, folder rollups, large files, cleanup guidance
  folders.rs          folder tree for the sidebar and breadcrumbs
  sources.rs          add / remove / relink sources, overlap detection
  db.rs               SQLite (WAL), versioned migrations

• The index is a single SQLite file in %APPDATA%\com.frame.gallery\frame.db; thumbnails are JPEGs in thumbnails\ next to it. Both can be deleted at any time without touching your photos.
• Thumbnails are served by a custom framer-thumb:// protocol, so the browser lazy-loads and cancels them like ordinary images and the UI thread never decodes anything. Originals use Tauri's scoped asset: protocol, limited to the folders you added.
• FRAMER_DATA_DIR overrides the data folder (with FRAME_DATA_DIR retained as a compatibility alias).

Known limits (v0.1)

• Gallery-first: rename / move / copy are done in File Explorer; Framer only offers Show in File Explorer and Move to Recycle Bin.
• Photos: JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF (first frame). Videos (MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM) are listed and play in the viewer when WebView2 supports the codec, but have no thumbnails yet. HEIC and RAW are not supported.
• Albums, bulk rename/move, duplicate finder, slideshow and editing are Phase 2/3.
• The "Fit" thumbnail toggle and thumbnail size apply to all grid views.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md first and follow the Code of Conduct. Project conventions (commit format, append-only changelog) are written in Indonesian. To report a security issue, see SECURITY.md and do not open a public issue.

License

Framer is released under the MIT License. Third-party dependencies keep their own licenses.